Top How The Past Shapes You Quotes

Favorite How The Past Shapes You Quotes

1. "And why is Saint Paula a Saint? She dumps her four kids at a convent. She runs off to Hajira with Saint Jerome. How is that a saint?You've got shitty mothers all over America who would love to dump their kids and travel."Author: Amy Bloom

2. "But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony - Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up - take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now."Author: Erich Maria Remarque

3. "God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny."Author: Garrison Keillor

4. "If faith never encounters doubt, if truth never struggles with error, if good never battles evil, how can faith know its own power? In my own pilgrimage, if I had to choose between a faith that has stared doubt in the eye and made it blink, or a naive faith that has never known the firing line of doubt, I will choose the former every time."Author: Gary Parker

5. "It was exactly the sort of thing I needed to be reading that afternoon: a story where, no matter how bad things got, you knew everything was going to turn out fine in the end."Author: Heather James

6. "I learned Hollywood is a small community, and you really have to be a part of the community to get anything done. Unlike traditional industries, where you can do things from afar with phone calls and e-mail, this town is really about being social. Because that's how trust gets built."Author: Jeffrey Skoll

7. "But madness? That small remnant of altered consciousness, pure or in response to circumstances. Circumstances of life, even those of the body itself and its chemistry. How cruel and stupid to punish this as we do with ostracism and fear, to have forged a network of fear, strong as the locks and bars of a back ward. This is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime."Author: Kate Millett

10. "The societies kids naturally form are tribal. Gangs, clubs, packs. But we're herded into schools and terrified into behaving. Taught how we're supposed to pretend to be, taught to parrot all kinds of nonsense at the flick of a switch, taught to keep our heads down and our elbows in and shut off our minds and shut off our sex. We learn we can't even piss when we have to. That's how we learn to be plastic and dumb."Author: Marge Piercy

11. "But even a nice mom and dad like this can't really sense how their child's been assaulted by commercialism ever since she was little, how she's lived in fear of being eaten alive by the morons around her. They just don't get it.Mom always lectures me about not being afraid of getting hurt, but all she can imagine is the kind of hurt she's experienced herself. She has no idea of the threats that surround kids these days, how much we're bullied, how much hurt this causes."Author: Natsuo Kirino

12. "And you taught me what this feels like.And then how it feels to lose it.And you showed me who I wanted.And then who I wasn't.And you ticked every box.And then drew a line.And you weren't mine to begin with.And then not to end with.And you looked like everything I wanted.And then became something I hated.And you get thought of every day.And then not in a good way.And you let me leave.And then wish I'd stayed.And you almost killed me.But I didn't die."Author: Pleasefindthis

13. "How would you like to find out how good my right is?"Author: Sonny Liston

14. "Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I'd rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on."Author: Tony Visconti